The Beach (I Know What's Underneath)
by RevampWriting
Summary: 'Whitekit didn't know his brother's name until he was a moon old, and didn't understand it until he was nearly two moons old.' Or, not every family is a happy one.


**It has been ages since I wrote anything, oh boy. Hopefully I'm not too rusty~**

**This story is going to be a series of one-shots detailing the life of one of my favorite roleplay characters! The setting is not the canon Clans - this story takes place in the Lost Coast Clans, and more specifically in WaveClan. I won't ramble on about it too much, y'all will be getting more of a feel for the setting and the Clans as the story goes on. For now, the most you need to know about the setting is that all the Clans live on the American west coast.**

**I will hush now. Enjoy the ride! It's gonna be a rollercoaster.**

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Whitekit didn't know his brother's name until he was a moon old, and didn't understand it until he was nearly two moons old.

At first, he was too busy bearing the season to notice. The weather was cold, and he was only small, at the time. Snow was unusual for the coast, but it came in _droves_ that season, making the stones of the cliffs slick and precarious with black ice. More than one group of cats would pass by the nursery heading towards the medicine den, supporting some unfortunate warrior who had fallen and sustained injuries on the rocks. Whitekit hadn't understood that, at first, either, but watched with wide eyes anytime such a group passed, only to squeak and draw back inside the den when a cold wind would ruffle his short, downy kit fur. Inside the den, it was warmer, with the moss and feathers that made up nests, and the other queens, and his own mother bending down to groom and nuzzle him, but still, leafbare would reach its icy fingers inside the cave at night and make Whitekit shiver in his sleep.

Growing and playing under his mother's watchful eye took precedence, too, even with the frigid distraction of leafbare. Learning to walk smoothly and confidently, and to talk in more than broken-up words and squeaks was vastly more interesting than inquiring about his brother. Trying solid prey for the first time – sculpin, because fish was their most reliable resource in leafbare, and it was too risky to send cats all the way out to Thundering Stones when storms stirred up the ocean currents so much, so hunting from the tide pools where sculpin and gobies were most common was the smartest move – was momentous when his world was still so small. So much was changing and there was so much to learn, it was almost a wonder he noticed at all before it was all right under his nose.

But, as his mother told him, he had always been a bright tom.

Slowly but surely, he noticed little things: the way his mother would stare at him sometimes, smiling but somber; the way her eyes would go distant and she would fall quiet every once in a while; the way the nest they shared was just a little too big. He knew something was wrong, even if the exact shape of the wrongness still eluded him.

He wasn't sure quite how he learned the name itself. Moons and seasons and years later, he could look back and still not know, incapable of picking out the exact moment that the name became part of his memory. Maybe something of those first few weeks of life had stuck, even if the memories were just a blur of forgotten things, as all early kithood was. Maybe he had heard it whispered by some of the other queens, or the medicine cat, or someone around camp who happened to look in Whitekit's direction when he was outside playing. Maybe he had woken in the middle of the night and heard his mother's soft, broken murmurs, her voice thick with the privation of something deeper than Whitekit could understand, then.

No matter how he knew the name, though, he didn't _understand_ until he was two moons old.

He woke feeling cold. Leafbare was more than halfway over, by now, but the weather hadn't improved at all, and Whitekit made a whimpering mewl when he woke without his mother wrapped tightly around him to keep him warm. Lifting his head, the tomkit glanced around, noting Blueflower and Rosethorn both curled up in their nests along the opposite wall of the den, both queens seeming to be sleeping. His own mother, however, was gone, and peering around even the darkest corners of the den yielded no sign of her. He rose to his paws, shivering as the motion made the cold seem sharper, and fluffed out his fur as he carefully stepped out of the nest. He padded quietly towards the edge of the den, pricking his ears as he picked up a hiss from outside.

Sticking his nose outside, he finally spotted his mother, standing opposite another cat – a white tom, though it was too dark, and the other cat's face too far from the ground for Whitekit to see him properly. He couldn't see his mother's face, either, the queen's back towards the nursery, but he _could_ see the fur along her spine bristling, and the way her fluffed-out tail lashed fiercely from side to side.

"You are a _coward_," she hissed at the tom, acidic enough that even Whitekit flinched back, his eyes widening. He had never heard his mother use that tone before, and he automatically shrunk down, ears flattening.

"You don't understand, Silverfish," the tom shot back tersely.

The silver-and-white tabby barked a laugh, harsh and incredulous, so very different from the way she would chortle and purr whenever Whitekit would imitate the Clan's warriors or show her a new mossball trick. "Oh, _don't I_?" she exclaimed disbelievingly, tail whipping in an arch behind her. "I lost him _too_, Ternfeather, don't you _dare_ say that I don't understand!"

The white tom flinched away from her at the words, taking a deliberate step back, and Whitekit could see it when his tail began to lash as well. "You _don't_!" he insisted. "You don't understand even _half_ of what I've lost!"

"Oh, I'm _aware_ of how much you've _lost_," Silverfish retorted scathingly. "I would just _think_ that after losing _oh-so-many_ cats, you would _care_ enough about the ones you actually have_ left_ to not _abandon_ them!"

"_You_ don't know _anything _about it!" Ternfeather snarled, his fur fluffing up and teeth briefly flashing in the moonlight. The older tom took a step towards the equally furious she-cat before him. "You don't know _what_ I'm feeling! _I_ would think that _you_ would know better than to _run your mouth_ for once in your life, but _no_ – you _insist_ on acting like you know _everything_! You have _no idea_ what this feels like!"

"I _lost _my_ son_!" Silverfish roared, jerking forward to put herself nose-to-nose with him, blue eyes blazing. "But I am _trying_ to be there for who I _do_ have left – _unlike_ _you_! You need to _pull yourself together_ and at least _try_ to be a father for-"

Ternfeather took a step back, shaking his head. "I'm not his father."

The queen jerked back and fluffed up, either from anger or pure shock. "_What_?"

He gave a low, hollow laugh. "Graykit is _gone_," he ground out. "I can't _be_ his father, anymore." He moved just enough that he could look back at Whitekit, yellow eyes distant even as he stared right back at the younger tom. It was silent for a moment, before he declared, "I'm not anyone's father."

The white tom turned away and trotted off without another word, not even so much as glancing backwards as he made his way towards the edge of camp. Silverfish sputtered in his wake, hissing, "_What_ – Ternfeather! _Get back here,_ you stupid, pathetic, _fox-hearted little_ \- !"

Whitekit didn't remember saying anything, but he must have at least uttered some small noise, because his mother cut herself off abruptly and whipped around, her blue eyes growing wide when she spotted him peering out from the entrance of the nursery.

"Whitekit," she breathed, momentarily frozen, before she swiftly rushed over to him, her expression crumpling. "What are you doing awake, little one?" she asked, bending down to rasp her tongue over his ears.

"I was cold," he answered quietly. Even his mother's repeated licks and nuzzles didn't bring any warmth to alleviate the chill that seemed to have set in all the way to his bones.

Silverfish sighed, drawing back to give him a small frown. "I'm sorry, Whitekit," she murmured, meaning stretching beyond just the way he had started to shiver slightly without noticing. "Let's get you back inside and warmed up, then, shall we?"

Whitekit gave a small, weak nod. He followed his mother when she straightened up and padded back into the nursery, numbness making his steps clumsy and heavy. He stole a brief glance over his shoulder at the empty camp behind them, the cold in his body lodging what felt like ice in his throat before Silverfish's tail swept over his back and drew him into the familiar dark of the den. Even when his mother curled up around him, both now safe in their nest in the nursery, Whitekit thought he could feel the frost of that emptiness everywhere, understanding like leafbare itself in his mind.

His brother's name was Graykit, and Whitekit understood with painful certainty that Graykit was dead.

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**No idea how frequently this is going to be updated, but there's gonna be at least three more chapters (probably more), so expect updates ~sometime~ in the future.**

**Comments are my lifeblood, so let me know what y'all thought!**


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